Is There a Future for Indie Games? 217
An anonymous reader writes "If you've been following Greg Costikyan's recent rants (such as Death to The Games Industry), you would have seen mention of one developer's attempt at breaking the traditional games publisher funding model. Well, their game is now in the stores, and whats more it has been getting some pretty good reviews, but has anyone heard of it? Judging by some
press, the marketing has been somewhat underwhelming. So the question is, is there still a viable space for good games developed outside the traditional corporate publisher model, or does E.A. already own the future of video games?" Moreover, when indie developers have to go up against the likes of EA and Steven Spielberg, what hope can they have for matching that kind of success? At least one company thinks they can do it by offering games for direct download. Is direct purchasing enough of an incentive for your average gamer to shell out money on something he's never heard of before?
Indie games were the wave of the past (Score:5, Insightful)
I point the world to (Score:2, Insightful)
thankyouverymuch
CJC
Secret bootloader (Score:3, Insightful)
If PC gaming continues on a decline, and the console oligopoly continues to give a cold shoulder to letting independent developers obtain console devkits and sell games on indie labels, then no, there isn't much of a future for indie gaming. All three gaming handheld systems sold in U.S. stores, whether chain or local, are officially closed systems. (These include the GBA SP, the Nintendo DS, and the PSP.) Phones don't count because for one thing, most phones have decidedly subpar D-pads, and for another, a lot of people are happy with land lines and unwilling to pay $960 for a 2-year mobile phone service commitment (or import a SIM-free phone) just to play a video game.
MorePG (Score:5, Insightful)
I want to put my own GPL game server up on the most popular gaming network. With my own features running on the common protocol, so people who play in my "module" can play by my rules. Maybe that means possessions and attributes beyond the universal ones can't transfer, because some modules are built for "Monty Hall" style cheats, just pumping up characters without restriction. Maybe such a network will have a "web of trust" where changes to character state are tagged with their origin, which must be accepted by an automated system elsewhere, or not apply. It's a little complex, but once we work it out, we'll have a canvas on which players and masters of games can all exercise our imaginations on one another. Where's the most popular, featureful GPL MMORPG running right now? I want to take a crack at it.
Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
EA didn't make ID (Score:5, Insightful)
Cell phone and flash games (Score:3, Insightful)
Misconeception about Indie Anything (Score:5, Insightful)
Year after year art and hard work are ignored for sex and cheap thrills. I wish it were different.
Mobile games good indie platform (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems most of the money in that market is not trying to sell your game through a portal (though if you get a really big hit you can rake in the cash), or even worse trying to sell it yourself, but to make ad games that companies can make available for free as part of a competition. I think there is a big potential market for really innovative and addictive mobile games, as at the moment a lot is just re-releases of games for old platforms, with slightly updated graphics.
A few links if you are interested in getting started on J2ME programming:
J2ME.org discussion board [j2me.org]
J2ME Gamer [j2megamer.com]
Midlet.org [midlet.org]
If it's a good idea, the big guys will take it. (Score:3, Insightful)
If a small company comes up with a really good idea in their industry it'll end up being copied by the big dogs. Look at everybody and their brothers selling single songs for some variation of 99 cent.
Re:Indie games were the wave of the past (Score:5, Insightful)
These days, most types of games need good production values as well as a good concept. Hardly any game can get away with simple graphics like Tetris. You'll need good coders, level designers, artists, musicians, sound effects guys, motion experts... talents that are rarely found in a single person.
To add to that, games are getting more complex in the way of graphics engines, physics engines, and AI as well. It's hard enough to find someone up-to-date in these areas, let alone find someone who can improve on them.
So, you're probably looking at a team of various skills that are not widely available. I'd think these people are likely to be working in the industry already, and not much inclined to work on an extra project, especially not if you're on a typical EA 8 day workweek.
Then again, if you do have a good concept, it might be worth pursuing it, and convincing others to join in. Then hope you get bought out for craploads of cash.
Indie Game Math (Score:3, Insightful)
$49.99
- cost of boxes, CDs, manuals
- cost of shipping
- cost of shelf space
- publisher's cut
- cost of Hollywood voice actors
- other big budget expenses
===========
$49.99
Give or take, but I have yet to see an Indie game priced at an "impulse buy" level.
Experimenters (Score:4, Insightful)
The next genre (not mix of genres, but completely new genre) will probably be started by an indie game. Of course, 5 years down the road nobody will remember that game, and everyone will attribute the fact to the first blockbuster game hopping on the bandwagon.
Indie games are where the truly exciting stuff happens. EA and Co. are tied up doing Random Game 2006 and Other Game Part 3.
Where did you pull those numbers from? (Score:1, Insightful)
I see them at $9.99, $15.99, and $19.99. Have you ever even *seen* a downloadable game?
Re:EA didn't make ID (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd remain anonymous, too, (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, you corporate weenie knob-polisher, there is games after E.A. EA has the Sims. EA did not have Doom, Myst, Mario, the original Sim City, Tetris, Quake, Pac Man (scoff only if you never put a quarter into a Pac Man (or any of his relatives') machine in your entire life), or ten zillion other blockbuster titles that leap instantly to our minds when we think of popular games in history. And like any software gaming company, EA has had it's share of stinkers, too. (I have almost - after intense exorcism - forgotten about the one with the baby angel you fly around possessing people, which I purchased during one of those 24-hour brain tumors you get every year during flu season.)
Meanwhile, how's "free software" for indy? Truly, we may believe that there is only one kind of computer in the world and it proudly sports the bent-squares-in-Fischer-Price-colors logo on it's case, but I insist that non-Windows computers are not a myth - I'VE SEEN THEM! The truth is out there...running on an ext2 file system.
Now, while we're on the Sims, lemme just say that we played the Sims to death in our household for about a week, until we realized that the fun derived from playing the Sims came entirely from dressing up the little pixel dolls and downloading templates to draw precious little furniture pieces for them. Then we started mesh modeling instead. It's better because: (a) You can download it for free http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Home.2.0.html [blender3d.org] here, (b) It fits on a floppy instead of needing 2 Gigs to stretch out in, (c) It's all there, and doesn't need a $60 expansion pack every two weeks to keep current, (d) You can download some equally free starter dolls and furniture pieces to start playing with http://www.katorlegaz.com/index.php?a=download&c=B lender_3D_Model_Repository [katorlegaz.com] here, (e) You can make everything look like you want it too, even the naughty bits, and you don't need to wrestle with a transmogrifier to try to correct the blurry-pixels that appear when your model takes a shower, and finally (f) your models will never get so wrapped up in making breakfast that they forget they have to go to the bathroom and pee on the kitchen floor and then go take a shower because now their hygeine is red and leave breakfast to set the kitchen on fire, causing them to miss work and get fired over the telephone.
Yes, EA has had some home runs. No, they will not own the world. Now, don't you feel *better*?
You assume a perfect market - perfect information. (Score:1, Insightful)
Marketing and distribution channel of course, and this is the achilles heel of independent anything.
It has to be not only fun, but fun for a lot of people, enough to create a buzz.
It was a love story? (Score:3, Insightful)
> the greatest love story since Romeo and Juliet
The notion that it was supposed to be a love story didn't even occur to me until days later when I read someone complaining about that in a movie review.
IMHO, the movie was not a love story at all, but was a character piece---an examination of two people who feel lost, both within their lives and between cultures. I didn't feel any romantic tension between the two main characters, at all---they were two lost souls tossed together by the tumultuous waves of their lives, finding (in that brief moment before life pulled them apart again) a sense of understanding and companionship that people rarely find, and that steadied them through some particularly rough seas.
For that, the movie was brilliant. But if you were watching it as a love story, then, yeah, it was bad - it sucked as a love story because it wasn't one.
Re:Not at all. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I think so. (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow. That sounded exactly like me about 10 years ago, except for now I'm primarily into retro gaming with my daughter (I buy old consoles and games for cheap but I plan on buying Nintendo's Revolution if I got the ching). This segment of the market you and I are in is growing. Hollywood is running out of ideas and it's terminal so it's not like us "thirtysomethings" can justify spending $60 on a night at the cinema of even wasting two hours on a dvd. TV and satelite is just as pitiful (500 channels and still nothing to watch - I hear it all the time).
Yup, gaming (new and old) seems to offer the most bang for the buck. The industry won't ignore us.